Day Fire in Southern California

Twenty-five miles northwest of Santa Clarita, California, the Day Fire in the Los Padres National Forest had grown to 134,187 acres as of September 25, 2006, and was about 41 percent contained, according to the daily report from the National Interagency Fire Center. The human-caused fire threatened structures, power and gas lines, and communication and archeological sites. Firefighters have been fighting a difficult battle since September 4 to contain the fire under windy conditions in rugged terrain.
This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite was captured on September 24. The Day Fire sprawls across the mountains north of the cities of Ventura and Santa Clarita. Smoke spreads northwest from the actively burning portions of the fire, which are outlined in red in the image. The southern end of California’s agricultural heartland—the Central Valley—appears in the top of the scene. The irrigated farmland is a deeper green than the natural vegetation, which appears brownish-green.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides daily images of the area in a variety of resolutions and formats.
Credit: NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.